October 12, 2005
Padmasambhava; The "Second Buddha" as precisely predicted by Shakyamuni, the first incarnated Buddha.
"Every situation in your life is a learning experience
created by your Soul to teach you how to gain
more love and power."
- Sanaya Roman
As Buddha said: �What you are is what you have been, what you will be is what you do now.� Padmasambhava went further: �If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.� - Sogyal Rinpoche
Padmasambhava, who incarnated precisely on the forecasted fifteenth year after his death as Shakyamuni Buddha predicated, is shown above with the wide-open eyes which betoken the spatial dimension of Dzogchen. Dzogchen means, according to Lama Surya Das, "the innate great completeness. It points to our own innate wholeness, our own true Buddha nature, our untrammelled spirit, perfect and pure from the beginningless beginning. It is what we call the Buddha within -- not an oriental Buddha, not an historical Buddha, not one of stone, not male or female, but the Buddha nature within each of us, true and wise, loving and compassionate. We want to come back to that, awaken it, cultivate it -- that is what the path is about. We don't get it from outside, from someone or somewhere else, or even from our own ideas of what we are. The Havajra tantra says we are all Buddhas by nature but must, through our own spiritual work, awaken to ourselves."